A 14-year-old girl was stabbed to death in northern France on Wednesday morning while on her way to school, triggering a major manhunt before a 23-year-old suspect was arrested later the same day.
The schoolgirl was found critically injured at around 8 a.m. on a public road in Fère-en-Tardenois, a small town in the Aisne department west of Reims. Prosecutors said she had suffered multiple stab wounds, including numerous injuries to the neck.
Emergency services were called to the scene, but the teenager died before they arrived, according to the Soissons prosecutor’s office.
The victim was a ninth-grade student at Anne-de-Montmorency middle school in Fère-en-Tardenois, Le Parisien reported.
A 23-year-old man was arrested in Soissons shortly after 6 p.m. and taken into custody. Prosecutors said the suspect is unemployed and lives with his parents. No further description of the attacker was made public.
Authorities said his exact relationship with the victim still has to be established, but he may have been her former boyfriend.
A large-scale search operation was launched after the killing. Around 85 police officers were mobilized, along with drone operators, dog units, and helicopters, according to BFMTV.
The Soissons prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation for murder.
Investigators are interviewing the girl’s relatives and potential witnesses as they work to establish the circumstances of the attack and the suspect’s possible motive.
Pierre Moya, rector of the Amiens academy, said a listening unit and a psychological emergency team had been set up at the girl’s school for anyone affected by the killing.
“They will remain accessible for as long as necessary, to allow everyone to receive support during this difficult time,” he said.
Moya expressed his “deep emotion” over the killing and offered his “most sincere thoughts” to the girl’s family, friends, classmates, and school staff.
“I put myself in the parents’ place, and I feel just as much grief as they do,” Dorothée, a resident of the neighborhood where the murder took place, told AFP. “It could have been one of my children, one of my daughters,” she added.
“She always had a smile,” added Melissa, a friend from school who usually walked with her but had not done so on the day of the attack.
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